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Can FDM Do That?

Most everyone that uses or has seen a demo of Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (“FDM”) knows the basic functionality that FDM provides – mapping, data loading, data validation and financial statement certification. But FDM is so much more than the basics.

FDM is a very open architecture product readily supporting advanced customization. As I highlighted in my last blog post, the workflow process (Import  Validate  Export  Check) can be fully automated and executed on a scheduled basis using either FDM’s internal scheduling component or any Windows batch based scheduling tool that an organization prefers. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Any organization that has recently experienced a Hyperion product upgrade – for example, System 9 to Fusion or Enterprise to HFM – knows the pain of revalidating years of financial data. This exercise can easily take weeks. Not only is this process time consuming, it’s tedious and often prone to error. More importantly, data validation can be one of the biggest risks to a project. The need to improve seems obvious.

To address this opportunity, we developed a custom solution that leverages HFM and FDM’s advanced features, custom scripts and batch loading. The benefits are substantial – literally tens of thousands of data points can be validated (and re-validated) in minutes – with 100% data accuracy. This process is easily extendable not only to other Oracle/Hyperion products like Planning & Essbase but potentially to other data stores.

The benefits of this process may be obvious but let’s take a moment to think about them:

100% Data Accuracy – How valuable is this to your organization in the current economic and financial market climate? The cost of restated financials is far too great to fathom – potential for government fines, reduced shareholder equity and even loss of one’s job.

Shorten Implementation Timelines – How nice would it be for your project to come in on time or early? Using this solution, you can realistically trim weeks if not months out of a project timeline.

Reduced Implementation Costs – let’s face it, in this economy, every dollar needs to pay dividends. Whether you choice to leverage a consultant, temp, intern or internal resource to validate your data, there is a cost associated with it. Reducing the time associated with this activity will reduce your project cost.

I invite you to check back often as I’ll continue to discuss “outside the box” solutions that can add significant ROI to your FDM investment.